I feel it's a bit odd that the Pentax 645D is always forgotten when MFD is discussed, although the the original 645 has always been a much respected MF camera and the 645D is probably one of the more competent MFD cameras.

Another observation is that I was shooting a young horse jumping over fences recently, just a few jumps. I had three cameras with me s Sony Alpha 900, a Sony Alpha 77 and an Alpha 99 i had just for three days. Checking out light I decided for the Alpha 99, in spite of having it for three days and just 6 FPS. In the end I shot 6FPS at 6400 ISO and got a decent picture for each jump. The EVF was not making life easy, but 6FPS was enough. In this case I could have chosen the A900 for optical viewfinder, or the Alpha 77 for 10 FPS but neither would work well at 6400 ISO.

The images are still not perfectly sharp, but make a decent A3 print.

How could I manage shooting horses in the seventies with Tri-X pushed to 1600 ASA and without motor drive?

I find it interesting that it's the smallest new comer Pentax to MF digital that is making some of the biggest steps. Image stabalization, way more focus points, far more advanced metering, weather sealing, fully supported TTL, High sped sync.....and all for a lower price than the competition. Interestingly it comes from a company that makes 35mm and smaller DSLRs.

it comes from a company that was well known for its film 67 and 645 cameras

How could I manage shooting horses in the seventies with Tri-X pushed to 1600 ASA and without motor drive?

I wondered about a similar thing about how sculptors were able to work without power tools and diamond blades, until I went to Italy and saw the 80 year old knock out huge pieces of stone with simple hand tools. It had so little to do with their strength, I mean 80 years old... The answer to both questions is knowledge and skill. Too many people today expect the camera to do the work for them, but in reality it takes skill, advance planning and experience with the equipment.

If you are happy with the horse image that's great, but I wouldn't have been for a variety of reasons including that its front focused. See this is what I mean by camera usability is more important than anything else.

Yes, I know it is front focused. I was using manual focus and prefocused at 1/3 of the poles on the fence using live view. It seems I moved back after focusing. Interestingly, the camera also has peaking, and according to the peaking everything was in focus. So that says something about the accuracy of peaking.

I'm not happy about the focusing issue, but this is how things turned out, still the image makes a decent A3 print and the lady is perfectly satisfied and I have learned a bit.

What I found was that 6 fps was good enough to get 1-2 usable images on each jump. I have not shot show jumping since the nineties, but knew from experience that it is not easy to foresee the response time of the camera and myself. So I had three cameras one with OVF but not so good ISO capability one with EVF and 10 FPS and one with EVF and 6 FPS but having decent image quality at high ISO. So I chose latest one.

If you are happy with the horse image that's great, but I wouldn't have been for a variety of reasons including that its front focused. See this is what I mean by camera usability is more important than anything else.

The point wasn't to knock your image, but rather that whatever camera products come next, the ease of use is going to be more important than how great the sensor is, or some other component. I like a lot of how smart phones and cameras are merging. The idea that one could download an app for a dedicated camera and edit and e-mail photos from it is really cool, but will it be more usable? Will it allow the shooter to get the image he/she wants? Erik, you had 6 frames / sec, ISO 6400, and focus peaking but did it get you a perfect image?

I'll bet someone with a 60 year old Rolleiflex TLR might have done about as well since I consider it to be more 'usable'. When you are looking down into its nice WLF you also see the exposure meter and aperture and shutter settings at the same time as you do focus. You can adjust both shutter and aperture with finger wheels that you can adjust without changing your hand positions. If you had decided to shoot with flash you could have done so. There's less detail in high speed film, but if the image is blurry then it hardly matters.

On the other hand, I was never really good at manual focus. Also I would have problems following a galloping horse with a WLF. I had a WLF for my Pentax 67 but almost never used it and I always needed the built in loupe for focusing.

Of course, with a manual focus camera you prefocus, which I did in this case also did, but something changed.

I could have used flash, but camera mounted flash usually looks awful.

Anyway, sorry for the diversion, the discussion is really about the future of medium format.

The point wasn't to knock your image, but rather that whatever camera products come next, the ease of use is going to be more important than how great the sensor is, or some other component. I like a lot of how smart phones and cameras are merging. The idea that one could download an app for a dedicated camera and edit and e-mail photos from it is really cool, but will it be more usable? Will it allow the shooter to get the image he/she wants? Erik, you had 6 frames / sec, ISO 6400, and focus peaking but did it get you a perfect image?

I'll bet someone with a 60 year old Rolleiflex TLR might have done about as well since I consider it to be more 'usable'. When you are looking down into its nice WLF you also see the exposure meter and aperture and shutter settings at the same time as you do focus. You can adjust both shutter and aperture with finger wheels that you can adjust without changing your hand positions. If you had decided to shoot with flash you could have done so. There's less detail in high speed film, but if the image is blurry then it hardly matters.

I don't disagree, but we need to keep in mind that it is a small market with limited resources of development.

I essentially feel there are two markets, one is large sensor DSLR, that sector is served by Leica S and Pentax 645D. Integrated systems. Usability I don't know. Got the impression that the Leica S2 has good usability and a great viewfinder. Some authors have problems achieving focus.

The other market is the modular systems with removable back that you can put on any camera. Phase is also building a system to put their back on. Developing something that work for everyone is not easy.

Take for instance AF, some need it some do not need it. Microlenses or not? Long exposure or not?

The S2 does have a nice viewfinder - at least compared to a DSLR. Coming from a Rollei Hy6/AFi, personally I wasn't impressed. I had higher expectations on the build quality too, having used the R8 and R9 in the past. Regarding the S2's AF.... when you can count off the seconds it takes to move the lens from one end of the focus range to the other....

I've posted this before as have others. Phase would do well to pick up the Hy6 rather than to continue to iteratively improve the mamiya 645 platform. I guess they've got so much inertia they can't turn back.

I've posted this before as have others. Phase would do well to pick up the Hy6 rather than to continue to iteratively improve the mamiya 645 platform. I guess they've got so much inertia they can't turn back.

That would be nice, but I think there is more to it than just camera choice. Mamiya was competition on the low end. ZD. And now is no more.Mamiya also makes lenses while Rollei use Zeiss and Schneider. High production costs in Europe.

Well, when Hasselblad closed down H-system Phase One tried to acquire rights to Contax 645 and Leaf, Sinar, Jenoptic and Rollei built a consortium around Hy6. Phase finally acquired Mamiya. Actually, I think Mamiya is not a bad choice, they seem to have good lenses.

I guess that part of the reason Phase went with Mamiya is that it is 645, Hy6 is more like 6x6, meaning that even the IQ180 is a crop sensor.

The S2 does have a nice viewfinder - at least compared to a DSLR. Coming from a Rollei Hy6/AFi, personally I wasn't impressed. I had higher expectations on the build quality too, having used the R8 and R9 in the past. Regarding the S2's AF.... when you can count off the seconds it takes to move the lens from one end of the focus range to the other....

I've posted this before as have others. Phase would do well to pick up the Hy6 rather than to continue to iteratively improve the mamiya 645 platform. I guess they've got so much inertia they can't turn back.

Yes, but in the end Phase bought Leaf. I think the Mamiya 7 rangefinder lenses are amazing and I like the RZ lenses pretty much. But I would not go as far as to say the same for the 645. Some of them are great, but not all. The real hold up hasn't been lenses but the camera body. Oh well. That's what happened.

But the future of MF may include a move to even larger sensors since that's been the pattern. If they already are close to the limits of 645, then 6x6 and 6x7 are next? Would be good to have a platform and lenses that can support it.

I'd be excited to see a graflok style mount 4x5 digital back to work with all the view and tech cameras. That would be cool! But of course just a dream.

But the future of MF may include a move to even larger sensors since that's been the pattern. If they already are close to the limits of 645, then 6x6 and 6x7 are next?

The pattern has been moving to sensors that fit the format of the dominant modern high quality auto-focus lens systems: high end DSLRs getting to 36x24mm and the high end of DMF getting close to the 54x42mm of ”645” format. Lens development for larger formats like 6x6 and 6x7 has apparently ended, in particular at Hasselblad and Mamiya/Phase One, so for this and other reasons, I see very little chance of DMF in formats larger than 645.

On the other hand, another pattern is that steps up in format size usually have to be substantial, at least a doubling of sensor area, to give a clear enough advantage, so with 36x24 format now so strong, it seems natural for DMF to mostly consolidate at full 645 format, and evolve beyond half measures like 45x30 or 44x33 or even 49x37.

And then the sleeping giant.. Fuji. Think about it... Fuji has made all sorts of interesting MF cameras and they are a sensor manufacturerwith some original sensor designs. Expertise in CCD and Cmos manufacturing. They are still in the MF manufacturing game. They manufacture Hasselbladsand have 6x8 lens designs with the largest selection of tilt shift lenses. They have quite advanced live view functionality as well as very nice hybrid optical and EVF finders.They are also the only medium format company with very deep pockets. FujiFilm sales were $ 26 billion. If anyone has the cash and know how to make a radical new systemit's FujiFilm.